Question

Is this possible? If so how?

I have looked at Libxslt which is what it uses but it seems to involve installing a bunch of binaries and still will not be available as PostgreSQL function…

UPDATE: I ended up having problems using xlst_process() on large transformations which caused PostgreSQL to crash and ended up using FOP invoked by a plpythonu function.

Answer 1

xslt_process() requires Libxml to be installed, available (by adding Windows PATH Environment variables) and the xslt_process() function to be created

Solution:

1. Download and extract the zip: libxslt-1.1.26.win32.zip from ftp://ftp.zlatkovic.com/libxml/ to place on your dirve
2. Add the location of xsltproc.exe to your Windows PATH environment varible such as: “C:\libxml\libxslt-1.1.26.win32\bin”. You will know this is working when you can run it from the cmd line.
3. libxml2.dll, libxslt.dll and iconv.dll which are also required by xsltproc.exe (they can downloaded using the above link but I found them to already be in my PostgreSQL\8.4\bin dir) and need to have their location added to the Windows PATH too, such as: “C:\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin”
4. Run the SQL (which I copied from the bottom of “PostgreSQL\8.4\share\contrib\pgxml.sql”):

   CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION xslt_process(text,text,text)
   RETURNS text
   AS '$libdir/pgxml'
   LANGUAGE C STRICT VOLATILE;
   
   -- the function checks for the correct argument count
   
   CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION xslt_process(text,text)
   RETURNS text
   AS '$libdir/pgxml'
   LANGUAGE C STRICT IMMUTABLE;
     

The Libxml windows binaries are helpfully maintained and provided by: http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html

(NOTE: Windows User enviroment varibles do not require a restart but are only avaliable to the user, so my tip is add the varibles to System and User PATH’s)